High Speed Police Chase In Edina, Vehicle Goes Airborne, Kahoka Man In Custody After Manhunt

By Echo Menges

*Corrected Information

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2014 at 11:30 p.m.

According to Edina Police Chief Kelly Hayes the Edina Police Department, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and the Missouri State Highway Patrol took Matthew Coop, 27, of Kahoka, MO, into custody in the early morning hours on Wednesday, August 13, 2014, following a dangerous high speed pursuit through Edina.

At approximately 3:45 a.m. Chief Hayes responded to a call that someone was going around knocking on the doors of homes in southeast Edina. The suspect was stopped and he was being questioned by police when he sped away at a high rate of speed.

The suspect headed west on Highway 6/Lafayette Street Morgan Street toward the Highway 15 junction.

A witness to the chase was at the car wash at the northeast corner of the intersection cleaning out and washing their vehicle, getting ready to begin their shift at a local convenience store, and saw the chase go by.

“I heard tires squealing and watched it go by,” said the witness. “And I saw the lights of two big (police) trucks behind it. They weren’t right on his tail. They were just a little ways behind it.” 

*information from this witness has been discredited. There was only one police vehicle involved in this chase. It was the vehicle of Edina Police Chief Kelly Hayes.

“He was going at a dangerously high rate of speed,” said Chief Hayes.

According to Chief Hayes, the vehicle drove toward a home on Southwest Morgan Street and struck a vehicle parked in the yard.

“He was going at such a high rate of speed it’s lucky that van was there to stop him. If that van hadn’t been parked there the vehicle would have entered the house,” said Chief Hayes. “That’s how fast he was going.”

According to the homeowner, Evie McCauley, the vehicle missed some trees in her front yard, hit a steep patch and a bump in the ground and went airborne before it hit the broad side of her minivan, which was parked next to her home. The vehicle went over the top of her van, landed on the other side and did some damage to the north wall of her home.

   “It just went right over the top of the van and landed next to the house. I couldn’t believe it,” said Mrs. McCauley. “My daughter heard it, but at the time she just thought it was thunder. I was asleep right upstairs and didn’t hear a thing.”

“The bottom of the car must have hit the van because it didn’t have much damage to the top of it. The air bags went off, but I don’t think it had one broken widow,” said Mrs. McCauley.

“He was out of the car and on the run without a scratch on him,” said Chief Hayes. “It’s a miracle no one got hurt.”

The suspect fled the crash scene on foot and was pursued by law enforcement officials for a little over two hours before being found at approximately 6:15 a.m.

“He was found in a (soy) bean field about two miles north of town,” said Chief Hayes.

Matthew Edward Coop, a former Edina resident, is currently being held at the Lewis Clark County Jail on a Probation and Parole warrant. Charges from the pursuit and crash in Edina are still pending.

Coop is a former resident of Edina. In 2012 he was convicted on three felony counts of child abuse in Knox County. Coop was sentenced to serve time in prison. It is unknown at this time if Coop was wanted in relation to that case.

More information will be released in the August 20, 2014, edition of The Edina Sentinel.